Who am I, and why should you listen to me?
Most of you know me from my website HotDogProfits.com, my newsletter Hot Dog Cart News, or by listening to my interviews on Hot Dog Cart Radio.  I spent the last few years training people how to start and run their own successful hot dog cart businesses and I’m having a blast doing it.

I want to tell you how I learned the importance of the concept I am about to share with you now. 

Several years ago I started a hot dog cart business.  I had no idea what I was doing at first, but thankfully I got some pointers that got me through the start-up phase.  Over the next two years, I grew my business into a pretty successful operation with lots of repeat customers who really loved what I was going. 

Your business may be worth more than you think.
Every day people would tell me “You know, I’ve always wanted to do this”.  Then a funny thing happened, I started getting offers from people who wanted to purchase my business.  As a matter of fact, when I finally decided to sell my hot dog cart business, I had five people competing with each other to buy it.  I had no idea when I started but a hot dog cart business is really easy to sell mainly because of three things:

1) It is easy to understand
2) It is a fun business
3) It is a cash business

But there is one thing about a cash business that can really screw you up – sloppy or non existant bookkeeping, which unfortunately is the rule rather than the exception in our industry.  It’s not your fault, most of us were never taught this stuff. 

And the software that's out there is really hard to use correctly unless you have an accounting degree.  Right now I can see a bunch of eyes glazing over “Oh no, he is talking about bookkeeping”.  I don’t blame you, I hate bookkeeping.  It is  confusing and boring.  What a great combination – huh?

Save thousands of dollars.
Well don’t worry, I’m not teaching bookkeeping here.  Do you know why?  Because you don’t need to know bookkeeping.  Not any more.  I’m about to save you from all of that. 

If you had a great way to keep really good records, you’d be able to deduct all your expenses at tax time.  Remember that 20% savings I mentioned?  Well, 20% happens to be the average tax rate.  That means at tax time, you’ll get roughly $20 back on every $100 worth of stuff you bought for your business during the year.  If you make a lot of money, that tax rate may be as high as 35%.  Which means you will save that much more. 

We’re talking many thousands of dollars that are rightfully yours that you are just giving away.  But remember, the IRS says “if you can’t prove your deductions, then you have no deductions.”

A "push button easy" solution.
Then there is tax time.  What if you could just click a button at the end of the year and have all the numbers done for you.  Resulting in a single report that you just hand to your tax preparer. 

Well now you can. But it gets even better. Way better.

Do you want a job or a business? It's your choice.
If you can produce good income and expense records, as well as a professional profit and loss statement, you’ll go from owning your own job to owning your own business.  That is a critical concept, so pay attention here.  If you don’t keep good records, you will never be able to sell your hot dog cart business.  So really all you have is another job. 

Yeah, you own that job, but all it can ever be is a job.  But if you keep good records, your hot dog job will become a hot dog business.  A true asset that can be bought and sold.  A true asset that’s worth many times your annual profit, because a buyer can confidently project their return.

When they buy your business, they know for sure what they are getting.  Depending on your business, you may be able to get anywhere from $20k for a one cart business, to over $100k for a business with multiple carts.  The sale price of my business, King Weenie Hot Dogs, was well into five figures.  But only because I had good financial records to show the buyer.  By the way, I encourage everyone to...

Start your business with the intention of selling it. Even if you don't think you ever will.
Here's why. Let’s say you start your business for $1500 and a year later you get an offer for $15k, which buy the way is pretty low, that’s a 1000% annual return and that doesn’t even include all the profit that you made during the year.  Then do you know what you can do?  Find another location and do it again.  It will even be easier the second time.  But there is no way in heck you can do this without keeping really good records.  And that’s always been the biggest stumbling block. 

Until now, you only had two choices, both of them bad.
You could keep your books by hand on paper, not the best choice.  Or you could go out and buy a complicated program like Quick Books Pro for $200, then take a semester of accounting down at the community college before you can even attempt to use it because I don’t know if you know this, but Quick Books comes to you totally blank – it is empty.  You have to set up the whole thing yourself, and if you don’t know accounting, if you don’t know what goes where, you’re dead in the water. 

I was really lucky to have a wife who took some accounting classes and she figures most of it out, but it was a bear.  And even then we got a few of the accounts in the wrong place which we only found out about when the buyer pointed them out to us at closing.  Talk about stress.  The whole record keeping part of the business sucked.  I hated it, but the whole experience taught me how to do it right, which I am thankful for. 

Your wish is my command.
Like I said I have been teaching at HotdogProfits.com for a few years now and the number one request I get from my students is “Please show me an easier way to keep my books”.  Unfortunately I never had a good answer because there was nothing available out there that was both professional and easy to use. 

As time went one, I got more and more frustrated, so I finally bit the bullet and I hired a professional software developer to work with me in creating a bookkeeping program specifically for us hot doggers.  It is called Cash Tracker – Hot Dog Cart Record Keeping Made Easy.
Now you don't need to know bookkeeping.
With Cash Tracker, you don’t need any bookkeeping skills, and you don’t need to know anything about accounting.  Everything is already set up specifically for a hot dog cart business and it is preloaded with all the accounts you will need.  Cash Tracker is ready to use out of the box.  Just fire it up and go.  There are also a ton of extra features that allow you to track everything you do in your business. 

Does more than just keep the books for you.
Besides recording your incomes and expenses, you can also enter your business mileage, keep a record of your daily activities, and store the names, addresses and phone numbers of all your business contacts.  There is also an entire section for managing your employees and/or your independent contractors.  It even has a built-in time card function which calculates paycheck amounts for you. 

When you want to see how your business is doing, Cash Trackers crunches the numbers for you, and generates your choice of several different reports including a profit and loss statement.   Tax time has never been easier.  And all this is as easy as clicking a button. 

Now anyone can have professional financial records for their hot dog business.  Let me rephrase that because this is a key concept.  With the release of Cash Tracker, EVERYONE will have professional financial records.  That means you will have a true asset.  A business you can sell if you ever want to. 

This is a game changer. Don't be left behind.
I think Cash Tracker is one of the biggest things to happen to the hot dog business in a long, long time.  And I am really excited about it.  The playing field is now level.  I know it is going to help a whole lot of real people build real businesses that are worth real money.  And as a result, our whole industry will rise to a new level of professionalism and profitability.  This is still the ground floor, you are getting in at the perfect time. 

I just finished making a video which shows Cash Tracker in action and you’re going to be amazed at how easy it is to use.  I also wrote a special report which lists 101 deductions that you can use in your hot dog business and I’m giving that report away for free to anyone who wants it.